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Thousands of Kids' Books Collected For City Buses

Rita Daniels

People dropped off children’s books by the carload Thursday at a bus stop on Albuquerque’s west side.

The goal was to literally stuff a city bus with tens of thousands of kids’ books as part of the Discover a Bookprogram. They will be used to resupply the cubby of free books found on all of Albuquerque’s buses.

Nick Manole works with ABQ Ride and says since they started putting kids’ books on the buses almost 10 years ago they realized that many adults were reading them, too.

“We realized that the illiterate adult population was also learning to read from books on the bus,” Manole said. “That was something we really hadn’t thought about, but it was a pleasant surprise.”

According to the New Mexico Coalition for Literacy about 20 percent of adults in the state have a hard time reading.

Extra books that don’t make it onto the buses are given to homeless kids and schools with low-income students.

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